Customer Assistance is Mobile

I saw this Customer Assistance van parked up in Brushfield Street near Spitalfields in London.

It conjured up an image of some cape donning super customer service type rolling up to the wail of a siren to help someone with their rights as they argued with a surly shop assistant.

There is something nice about this idea of mobile, come-to-me customer assistance. I wonder what it is for? It looks decidedly ‘auto company’ to me. Some breakdown recovery?

Weirdly, there is no other branding. You’d think a company that took Customer Service (sorry Assistance) seriously enough to have a bunch of vans with ‘quick let’s get there and sort it’ livery, that they would at least append their name.

South West Trains Run Brompton Trial

In an attempt to try and provide an integrated service for it’s passengers, customers, South West Trains are currently trialling a scheme for Gold Card season ticket holders to ‘rent’ a Brompton folding bicycle for 3 months in exchange for a £100 deposit.

Available in a South West Trains colourway with South West Trains branding and Zéfal pump, this looks like a good deal.

I received a letter yesterday inviting me to join the scheme, but I already have a folding bike (A Dahon Speed Pro should you ask), so I’m not going to, but I encourage you to do so if you are a card holder. this is a progressive idea and needs to be successful as a pilot.

After lambasting South West Trains on a regular basis for failing to get me to work in a ‘friction free’ way, I applaud this scheme. It’s probably an idea that was brought to SWT by Brompton, but it’s encouraging to see.

It’s as yet unclear what the scheme will be if the pilot is a success, but I guess it’ll be provided for a small fee.

I ‘m glad that they are encouraging people to take bikes onto the trains as it always confused me why they didn’t consider cycle transport when the trains were designed in the first place.

Anyone who has travelled into London with a bike will know the ’second class citizen’ feeling you get when you take a bike onto a crowded train. People don’t like it. They fail to see that you’re doing a good thing, that you’ve spent you’re own money on trying to alleviate the congestion on our capital’s public transport.

I like to write about our cycling problem and I think that people who cycle rock.

And London os such a terrible city to cycle in.

Also read: London is definitely NOT a cycling city and Cycling in London

London is definitely NOT a cycling city

I’ve had a small rant about cycling in this city before, but my frustration resurfaces with LBi’s move to new offices in Brick Lane.

I’ve been in my new location 3 weeks now and I struggle, for the life of me, to find a nice route to and from Waterloo to Brick Lane.

The problem is that there are just too many junctions, one-ways and congested traffic. Everyone is angry, Taxis are out to kill you and WHEN WILL MOTOROCYCLIST STOP treating cycle lanes and safe areas at traffic lights as theirs?

I hear that there are plans to allow them to use bus and cycle lanes.

RAaaaaAAaAAAaaR!

(Should I take my iPod off?)

Nice Things This Week 2

Yay! I remembered to share some more links with you this week. This could become a Friday habit (okay, technically it’s Thursday evening here) but I’m promising nothing. You hear me? Nothing!

Award winning Honda TV advert ripped off and applied to a website. I think I actually HATE this.

Playing football with binoculars on. Funny. Want to play.

Ever wondered how much space in our transport network is lost through choice of vehicle..? No..? Are you kidding me? Well check this image showing the amount of space required to transport the same amount of people by bus, bike or car.

Some haunting images from the day before. This is why I love photography and why I hate post production photo-engineering. I’ll argue with anyone that photography is about capture (though ‘capture’ may be interpreted).

This is what I hate about manipulated photography. It should be on the bedroom wall of a stoner student.

More photography, but this one feels personal, old and from a bygone era.

Need some new business cards, don’t be lame and print on card, try some of these. I wish we had, ours are rubbish. The divorce one is quite sweet and I like the one with a seed embedded within it.

I’m sure you’ve seen this transparent screen trick, I still like it. the effort people go to is amazing.

Move your mouse about and feel sick and disorientated. Wicked.

What’s your favourite keyboard shortcut? I wish I could ‘Apple-Z’ sometimes in life.

London Waterloo Says Goodbye to Le Train

London Waterloo Says Goodbye to Le TrainOriginally uploaded by Snowbadger

I blogged this a while back, March this year in-fact, but it’s finally happened.It shut after 13 years and 81 million travellers.Blimey! Is it really 13 years since it opened? I remember it happening when I was just starting University.Waterloo has given it’s International train route over to St Pancras with the promise of 186 mph speeds.Imagine doing 186 mph through Kent en-route to the Chunnel. That must be amazing, I can’t wait to have a go.I’ve travelled via Eurostar a helluvalot over the last 2-3 years as I’ve been working with the lovely people at Orange and France Telecom, and I have to say I am a big fan.It’s so much less stressful than flying. You leave the centre of London and arrive in the centre of Paris.No queuing, no security, no fuss.Anyway, here’s a picture of the now closed Waterloo terminal.Why do they insist on calling the place you depart and arrive a terminal? It’s not nice, particularly if flying, people are already edgy.

Eurostar Departs Waterloo for Good. What next?

I love the Eurostar.

For me it has been ideally placed for my regular trips to Paris and even though I live near to both it and Heathrow airport I choose ‘Le Train’ whenever as it takes roughly the same time. I’m not sure of the carbon footprint of either journey, but the train is a far nicer experience than flying IMO.

This year will see the London Eurostar terminal move from London Waterloo International to St Pancras. For those that don’t know London this means that it is moving from one side to the other.

The main aim is to shorten the journey through southern England to the coast and tunnel entry point in Kent because apparently St Pancras is better placed to link with the ‘high-speed’ rail routes down to the coast.

It’ll be 40 minutes Quicker apparently which is a shame becaus eyou lose some of that travelling across London. Well I would.

So what will happen to Waterloo ‘International’?

Apparently nothing that inspiring.

This is old news, but so far I’ve not seen anything happening.

That whole area is going through a massive regeneration right now as I understand a lot of buildings are coming down and three high-rises, dubed the ‘Three Siters’ are going up in next to the London Eye and Shell building.

It’ll probably mean that my business meetings in Paris are now better served by flying (boooo).

I’ll miss you ‘Le Train’… amitiés.

Cycling in london

A colleague of mine has recently posted on the state of cycling in London. I wrote about my frustration at the lack of integration between the rail networks and the city when it comes to the transportation and storage of bicycles, but Stephen highlights a very good point.

Riding a bike in London canbe exhillerating fun (!) but the authorities do little to encourage us out of cars and onto greener forms of transport.

I spoke with a colleague yesterday who tiold me that it takes the same amount of time to ride a bike in as it does to ride a motorbike!

I mostly ride through Holborn or Blackfriars on my way to Clerkenwell where the office is. Either route I take is strewn with potholes and uneven drain covers.

I have a rather nice folding bike that has thin wheels so I try to avoid riding through these hazards as a way of saving my wheels.

Swerving from buses and eager taxi drivers who just love pulling out in front of me is enough fun as it is, I don’t need the crappy roads. They are horriffic.

Recent visits to Amsterdam and Cologne show what it should be like.. Incidentally here is an interesting statistic from a Dutch cab driver; there are 1.5 million people in Amsterdam, 1.6 million bikes and 700,000 bike thefts a year!!

So everyone has a bike, but half of them steal them! Brilliant.

Englishness Revisited

Would you believe it?

I’ve started talking to another of my ’station platform buddies’ now! He’s a guy I’ve stood next to for 3 years and we’ve never so much as said hi before. But today he joined in a conversation I was having with the only person I speak to at the station.

Of course, being English we have to be given permission by the circumstance, so the fact that the train was n hour late was enough. If you just openly speak to someone for no reason, you’d be locked up here!

Stupid isn’t it.

I’m going to try and reel in the other ‘platform buddies’ – I challenge you to do the same.

Yeah you know the guy, say Hi to him.

Okay – so this post is pure drivel. But I do find this behaviour interesting.

Airbus A340 XWB

This morning I was awaiting a physio appointment on a running injury I have when I was looking for something to read in the waiting room.All the usual dross was there. It never ceases to amaze me how old copies of Harpers & Queen, Country Life and Car magazine find their way into these places. Maybe it’s a tactic employed by some marketing people somewhere?Anyway, I picked up a 4-month-old copy of Time magazine and started reading when I strayed upon an advert for the new A340 XWB which means ‘Extra Wide Body’ – see what they did there. Genius.So it set me to thinking. Why oh why does an aerospace manufacturer feel it necessary to advertise in a consumer facing magazine such as Time?I mean it’s not like I ever get to choose the class of plane I fly on is it? In fact I rarely choose the airline, often being guided by price.Imagine the scenario.; ‘Hi return ticket to Berlin please. Oh and do you have any Airbus A340 XWBs available..? You do…? Oh good!’I guess it’s some random attempt at giving airlines a weird differentiator – ‘We use Airbus A340 XWBs. So fly with us.’Hmmm.Anyone know of any other campaigns of this type?I guess one that has been a little bit successful is the Intel chip, but then consumers could choose.Which reminds me, I once heard someone describe the new super jumbo A380′British Airways to Berlin. #ding ding da ding# with Scarebus inside’

Jumping Jigawatts – A Flying Car?

Oh my, if only I could get my hand on one of these.

Remember the movie Back to the Future promising us flying cars and hover boards? Oh how I wanted a hover board, but check out this flying car that should have aworking prototype by 2008 and be in production by 2009!